The COVID-19 pandemic and associated attempts to contain its spread have created unprecedented hurdles to international trade. This paper reviews trade facilitation measures implemented in North and Central Asia (NCA), including transport and trade finance facilitation. All NCA countries have sought to protect the public health by restricting movement of people (including across borders) and applying special sanitary regulations at border crossings. These have included requirements to sanitize trucks, protect customs officials, change drivers, and requiring COVID-19 tests from drivers.

The COVID-19 pandemic is considered the most serious health crisis and the greatest challenge to humankind since the Second World War. Although countries in East and North-East Asia (ENEA) were the first to be hit by COVID-19, they have so far been successful in controlling the outbreak with relatively low fatalities, partially thanks to various containment measures.

This paper explores the kinds of demands governments in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) could and should be formulating and submitting in the context of the ecommerce negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as well as any current or proposed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) they are engaged in with advanced industrialized countries.

This study analyses the relationship between non-tariff measures (NTMs) applicable in the agricultural sector of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This paper examines recent technological developments and how they could impact efforts by policymakers and political leaders in developing countries to harness trade and investment liberalization to achieve economic development outcomes. 

This paper addresses the regulatory and policy environments conducive for e-commerce to thrive. In particular, as regulatory issues affecting e-commerce have become more prominent in recent regional trade agreements (RTAs), the paper seeks to investigate their role in setting the regulatory standard in this area. Indeed e-commerce- or digital trade-related obligations and commitments have grown deeper and broader in more recent RTAs compared to earlier ones.

The growth of digital trade is dependant upon greater interconnectivity across borders. Several countries strive to achieve such interconnectivity and integration in digital trade through international trade agreements. Digital trade integration is a complex, multidimensional process that integrates regulatory structures/policy designs, digital technologies and business processes along the entire global/regional digital value chain.

In 2019 and the early months of 2020, global trade faced two major albeit very different shocks, namely the United States-China trade war and the cascading response of the countries around the world to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper aims to identify the various types of non-tariff measures (NTMs) affecting Pakistan’s textile sector.  The textile industry is of great importance to Pakistan and is a major contributor to its gross domestic product. However, Pakistan’s textile exports are facing market access challenges, in part due to trade barriers of some developed countries.

South Asia could unleash its full potentials, provided, it improves the infrastructure facilities, which are at present not sufficient to meet the growing demand of the region. The renewed and shared agenda of the South Asian regional cooperation should aim to reduce both intra- and inter- regional trade facilitation gaps as well as to expand the connectivity. South Asia has to enact its own connectivity and trade facilitation arrangement to take forward the agenda of South Asian integration.